Monday, May 15, 2006

The combined eBay, PayPal and Skype developer conference is coming up, June 10-12 in Las Vegas. I missed the event last year, but I will be staffing it this year! A few of us are being let out of the mysterious eBay Research Labs for the occasion. They told us to get to work on the future of e-commerce, and have kept us locked up for months, shipping in occasional supplies of Starbucks and fresh interns. I've been writing serious amounts of code for the first time in years, if fact I'm too busy writing Java to have time to go to JavaOne this week.

The conference is supposed to illuminate questions such as:

- What will the next technology revolution be

- How will it impact commerce and communications on the web

- And what opportunities will it provide for developers and technology innovators

- How will the Long Tail Theory play out

- Web 2.0 and how to build revenue streams

Its become a common joke to keep incrementing this: Web 2.1, Web 3.0 etc. but personally I think the most interesting developments aren't even Web based. e.g. Skype isn't a Web application, it defines its own virtual private peer to peer fabric that overlays the Internet.